In pictures: The (mostly) cool history of the IBM mainframe

IBM's iconic mainframe turns 50: In its history the IBM mainframe has been hailed and vilified. It has been born, reborn (many times) and pronounced dead. And yet the Big Iron remains a key computing resource for many large companies and will do so for many years. Here we take a look at the mainframe’s long history, from its use with the US space program to its prominence inside large business datacentres. Take a look.

The Computer History Museum has this great cartoon showing the steps required in a typical batch-processed job on a punched-card based computer system. This was typical of much computing from the 1950s until well into the 1970s, the museum states.

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